


Southbound

by Sineala



Category: Gone Home
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 16:38:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2699867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Lonnie's life together: road trips, pirate queens, and riot grrrl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Southbound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smokefall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokefall/gifts).



> The CNTW is for implied underage sex; as far as I can determine, Sam is seventeen.
> 
> Thanks to osprey for beta.

You know how sometimes when you're standing somewhere really high up, like a bridge or the top of a cliff, you get a feeling like _I wonder what would happen if I jumped_? Not a bad feeling -- a feeling like, _wow, that would be wild_? And even though you know you wouldn't really do it, you can picture yourself climbing over the safety railing? And it feels like if you jumped, you'd fly?

I'm in the car with Lonnie, and we're heading south on I-5. We've just hit the California border. And I feel like I'm flying.

It's the middle of the night. At home, Katie's probably just gotten back from Europe. Mom and Dad have no idea. It feels so surreal. We're leaving, me and Lonnie. We're gone. I don't know if you still call it AWOL when she didn't even make it to boot camp, but she's not joining the army anymore. We're going to be together. We're really doing this. I spent so long thinking that we had an end date, that this was it, but now it's like the calendar's blank in front of me and all the days are ours. All the days are for us. Together.

The Bratmobile tape in the car stereo hisses. We've worn it out playing it so much that you can faintly hear Side B playing in reverse in the gaps between songs.

I'm keeping my eyes on the road, but out of the corner of my eye, I can see Lonnie, and she keeps glancing over at me, smiling a little, like she can't believe it either.

"What do you think San Francisco is like?" she asks.

"I don't know," I say, "but I'm looking forward to finding out."

We decided on it almost without really needing to talk about it at all; where else would we go? There are gay people there. That's what everyone always says. That's where they go. I wonder if it's going to be weird. I wonder if there's going to be rainbow flags hung everywhere. And Lonnie has a couple of friends who were a grade ahead of her, who got into Berkeley; maybe they'll let us crash with them, if their semester's not over yet.

It's ten hours from Salem to San Francisco. We could make it, but it's probably better not to, and we've got enough money for a motel room. Where we can be together, where no one will interrupt us.

I pay the clerk at the front desk, and I feel so adult. This is what grown-ups do. They rent rooms. They go on trips. They share beds with their girlfriends.

We get our stuff in the room and we're both too wired to sleep, so we dump our bags on one bed and lie down on the other. Lonnie's got a sketchbook out, pressed into the cheap floral comforter, and she's working on a drawing of what looks like Captain Allegra and her first mate. She hasn't done the faces yet, just the bodies. The two pirates are on the deck of their ship, holding hands; the first mate's clothes are a little torn, and Allegra is standing mostly in front of her, brandishing a fearsome cutlass in her other hand. Protecting her.

"We should do another story," Lonnie says, while she fills in a few more rips in the first mate's shirt. It looks kind of punk. I like it.

I'm lying next to her, and I lean in so I can kiss her. I end up reaching her jaw. It's good enough. It's all good.

"Yeah?" I reach out, stroke her hair. "What do you think should happen in this one?"

"Terrible peril," she says, distracted, with all her attention on the drawing. "The first mate is kidnapped."

"By pirates?"

Lonnie scowls at the drawing and erases a line. "Not pirates. All the pirates know that Captain Allegra loves her and would do anything to get her back. They'd never dare. It's like an agreement. But the Royal Navy doesn't know any better."

"No?"

"Of course they don't." She's sticking her tongue out as she draws; it's so cute. Under her pencil, the faces start to take shape; Allegra has a hard, determined slash of a mouth. "They don't know how loyal she is to her captain. They think they could take her away and she could sail for them, but she wouldn't. She would never betray her captain."

"Not for anything."

"She loves Allegra too much," Lonnie agrees. The first mate is drawn with wider eyes, like she's a little bit afraid, but she's not cowering. The first mate is always brave, just like Allegra. "Too much to ever consider it."

"Definitely," I agree. "So Allegra rescues her from the navy?"

Lonnie nods. The drawing is almost done. "It's dangerous," she says. She's almost whispering. "They've got her locked up, and the first mate isn't sure Allegra's going to come at all, and she's so worried. But then outside her cell, she hears a fight -- bam! bam! pow! -- and she looks up and Allegra's standing there with her sword in one hand and the keys in the other, and she's so happy she could cry."

"The escape is dangerous too," I add. "There are so many other sailors and they all want to stop them from leaving, but they've got-- they've got grappling hooks! Ropes! Something like that." I can picture it now. "And they throw them over, back to their own ship. Captain Allegra's holding the first mate and they swing over together."

"Just like that scene in the first Star Wars movie," Lonnie says, and I know what she's going to say, because she says it every time. "Leia was so hot." She laughs. "My first crush. And don't act like you're so superior when yours was She-Ra."

It feels like she knows everything about me, and I love it. "Nothing wrong with Princess Leia. She-Ra's just better, that's all."

"So you say," she says, and traces over a couple lines she's already drawn, darkening them. The sketch looks pretty much finished to me. And Lonnie must think so too, because she pushes the sketchbook away. "So what happens when Allegra's rescued the first mate?"

"Well," I say, "the first mate is really, really grateful, naturally, and Allegra is so happy to have her back, and--"

And then Lonnie's kissing me, sweet but urgent, like it's something she didn't think she'd ever get to do again and she has to do it right now before someone takes it all away, and her hands are at the hem of my shirt and everything in me goes hot and tight like I need her to touch me all over and at that point I don't really want to think about pirates anymore.

In the morning we smile lazy smiles at each other, check out, get in the car, head south again. We're heading through forests, more forests, farmland, vineyards. The hills around us are yellow-brown, summer-dry, and then there's the Golden Gate Bridge, and on the other side of it is freedom.

Even though Lonnie's friends are in Berkeley, the first thing we do is go to the Castro, just to see. There are actually rainbow flags. There are men holding hands. There are women holding hands. Nervous, I slide my hand into Lonnie's, and she squeezes my fingers hard. No one looks at us, no one stares, no one gawks. We're just people, here with our people.

There's a Pride parade in two weeks, a flyer says, the last Sunday in June, and I can't even imagine what it would look like. It seems so amazingly wonderful that it might not exist; a day when everyone's here, all in one place, like a holiday. A day when we're the normal ones, when everyone looks at us and sees us, when there's nothing to hide. I want to see it.

We get a little lost in Berkeley, on the way to find Lonnie's friend, and that's when we find the other half of our people. We end up wandering down the main drag, Telegraph Avenue, and into the music stores, these places with crazy names like Amoeba and Rasputin, and Lonnie's eyes go wide wide wide. They're like warehouses of music. They've got everything. So many bands we haven't even heard of. While we're standing there awestruck in the middle of the H section one of the employees asks us if she can help us find anything; Lonnie asks her about Heavens to Betsy, because that was one of the tapes we both left behind and we're not getting it back now. It was Lonnie's favorite.

The girl checks and says she doesn't have it, but did we know that Corin Tucker's new band Sleater-Kinney was going to have their first album out in two weeks?

We didn't.

And Lonnie grins at me, grins so big, like I did this, when I didn't do anything. But I'm glad to take the credit. And I'm happy too, so I'm grinning back.

It feels like an omen. It feels like we're doing something good.

And then eventually we make our way to Lonnie's friend's apartment, and a girl I don't know opens the door and hugs Lonnie, hard. Then she hugs me.

"You must be Sam," she says. "You can stay as long as you like."


End file.
